


The Face You Wore

by invisibledeity, Verdin



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: F/M, although perhaps not in the way you'd expect, because there's more going on between these two, so we just filled in some of the gaps, some dubcon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-03 18:40:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11538156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/invisibledeity/pseuds/invisibledeity, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verdin/pseuds/Verdin
Summary: Time is relative, especially for a man like Ardyn Izunia. When he stalls Noctis aboard the train to Gralea, the last thing he expects is for a familiar face to send him reeling. But by the grace of the Glacian, there are moments in time that ought be revisited, revered, and enshrined. Here is one such moment.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A collaboration between invisibledeity and Verdin - based on an Ardyn / Gentiana RP that was just too delicious not to share.

"This was the face you wore the day when..."  
   Gentiana remembered too many times when this sentence would have ended in 'died' or 'wished for death', and most of those were his fault. She was not even angry anymore. Could not be if she tried. Such was the blessing of being a mere vessel.  
   She felt Shiva's elatedness when she gave a little part of herself to the young prince, and it felt like arousal compared to the Mistress' usual state of mild amusement. She watched as Noctis and his friends took their leave, and she stood in the cabin for a while, her hands folded, a little smile on her lips, while the Astral sang to her of things to come.  
   Then her Queen went, leaving the Messenger as alone in her head as she could be these days. Icy kisses on her pale skin reassured her she would not be alone.  
  
   Gentiana's steps were soundless on the frozen crystal that covered the floor, and she stood a while just looking at the fallen healer.  
   He too had the face he wore when she left. She saw the bitterness beneath the skin, in the tiny wrinkles around his eyes, where snowflakes had settled. Her fingers danced over his brows, his cheeks, seeing him with touches instead through her eyes, finally coming to a rest on his lips. She leaned in close, her crimson mouth almost touching his, and breathed out gently as one would to shoo away a butterfly.  
   "You may speak now. I know you love to do."  


   Those fingers tracing soft patterns across his cheeks, over all the contours of his face. Oh, how she loved to touch. Ardyn remembered this all too well, and having her this close, forced to watch her from behind frosted eyes while she re-enacted such familiar motions, it set a burning deep below his skin. He felt jilted; angry, even, but none of these emotions were strong enough to melt the Glacian’s touch.  
   It simply wasn’t fair that she had Shiva on her side.

  
   His eyes were wide, eyebrows still fixed in that semi-raised position. Mouth all soft and half-open, muscles set in a mixture of surprise and longing. Had he revealed too much to Noctis through this simple expression? Didn’t matter. The boy was slow on the uptake. But seeing Shiva wearing the face that shattered his heart… there wasn’t much he could do to avoid it.

   How cruel of her, to freeze him at his most vulnerable. So when she blew gently across his face, and told him to speak, he exhaled as if coming up from a deep dive, and prepared to play.

  
   Hearts. It would do well to start with the subject. Go straight for the jugular, as it were.  
   “I had begun to doubt whether I any longer had one. Trace your hands down a little lower, my dear… you may find it beating still.”  
   He tried to take a step forward, but was unable. Only his face was permitted movement.

   Clever woman. The strain of his nerves as he struggled to force numb limbs into motion was too much like sleep paralysis, too much like the countless times spent caught half-asleep, half-awake under the influence of the daemons roiling inside him. And she, with her eyes still so serenely closed, watching him with naught but her touch. So he wielded his words like a scalpel, an intimate weapon destined to wound in the finest of lines.  
   “Why close your eyes, my dear? Does our dark friend still plague you?”  
   She’ll know he isn’t talking about Shiva.  
  
   “Foolish, foolish boy.“ A whisper brought to his ears by a little icy breeze. She was even closer now, long lashes fluttering over his frozen stubble. Her hands did trace lower, ever so slightly, coming to a rest on the soft spot right below his ribcage, where a good hit would take the breath away from most mortals. Her touch felt different from the finger on his lips, not rough like snow crust, but smooth and liquid, melting ice and quicksilver. He felt it through all those layers that kept the world from him.  
   “You know I don't forget, beloved, as dark as a thing may be, and as much I may wish I did." It was her own voice now, soft and carefully modulated.  
   Her fingers dug into his solar plexus, searching for a pulse that was slow between ice and time, and she waited, lips resting on the tiny bit of his neck right below the jawline where no fabric hid the skin. No smile this time.

  
   Beloved. The word made him feel like the boy she teases he is, and for a moment he saw a shard of his past with such clarity – Gentiana, on the steps of the temple, ink-black hair uplit by low sun. Gentiana, holding him tight, begging, reaching out for his grace. Gentiana, petals wilting. Of course she hadn’t forgotten.  
    “So sentimental,” he purred, drawing the words out in a sly tease, and he breathed deep the crystal cold air when he was done. Feeling lungs strain against their frozen prison. Her mouth remained a tight line, and the smooth touch over his solar plexus pressed all the more firmly.  
   It was so tantalizing. If he could move, he would have shuddered at the touch of her lips on his neck. Or perhaps he would have arched his ribs ever deeper against her fingers, urged her to press harder, to tear inside. A smirk tugged at the edge of his mouth.  
    “Once again, my love, you have my heart in the palm of your hand. Why hesitate to do what you desire?” He pushed down his sadness, watched her hungrily instead. “Does it kill you to know you cannot bring me peace that way?”  
    He no longer knew if saving him was what she wanted. It probably wasn’t. But that was acceptable – he wanted to anger her, because the gaping space in his soul was opening wider with every second she spent before him, and he didn’t want to beg.  
  
   Her lips wandered along the line of his jaw, barely disturbing the stubble there. Even when she wore her most ridiculously high boots, she had trouble reaching much higher, and she had to wrap her arms around his neck and stand on tiptoes if she wanted to kiss him in earnest. She rarely did that, even in the beginning, when every day was spring and blossoms.  
   Gentiana, on the steps of the temple, tumbling, not willing to take his hand, not willing to ask for help. Gentiana, clad in shining black that streamed from her eyes, from the strands of inky hair, under the stars.

  
   Being so close to him after all this time brought back memories, and it brought understanding why the Mistress had wanted her to remain here. His scent was not the same anymore. Maybe down on his skin after a hot day, where perfumes and soaps and creams could not hide it anymore. Maybe not even there.  
   She stood on tiptoes now, placing a little kiss on his cold lips.  
   "I do not hesitate, beloved. I take my time."  
  
   Gentiana: how utterly beautiful, how pure. She kissed him like a butterfly receiving nectar, tickling skin he’d thought had lost all feeling long ago. She was ice but he was melting beneath her, and he wondered how it could be this soft again, how it could ever truly be this soft again. He wanted so badly to rest.  
    But even as he thought it, deep inside the daemons stirred. A small spark of darkness unfurling, flaring upward from the pit of his stomach to dance behind his eyelids. It was angry. Frustrated. And he heard the whispers, seeding razor-edged thoughts into his mind. Because his body wasn’t responding, wasn’t moving, and it reminded the shadows inside him of the years, all those long years spent locked away in Angelgard. Forgotten. No softness.  
    If only he could have some of the grace she’d been given by the gods. He wanted to take it. Oh, so badly. Much as she wouldn’t let him.

  
    She kissed him and he kissed back, as far as he was able, yearning, reaching, grasping for more, and he wanted to cry. Another thought that made the daemons roil. He ignored them. Spoke softer than before, although still with the smooth, possessive edge he so loved to use.  
    “Time is something I have grown quite accustomed to.” Then his voice fell in tone, barely a chill breath. “Oh, my Gentiana.”  


   She stopped in her tracks as he whispered that little 'my', taking a step back.  
   The quicksilver on his bare skin slowly ran down, over his stomach, drawing a circle around his navel, inching even lower, coming to a halt where sparse coppice the color of dark wine had taken root.  
   "And still, you have places to be, only in short while. You never said your goodbyes to your chosen king." She cocked her head the tiniest bit, a slightly interested magpie. "You do not mind if I borrowed a bit of you, for old time's sake?"  
  
   The touch wandering down his navel felt delicious, made him ravenous. But here, he was no predator, and that thought simply made him itch with anticipation. More so the fact that it was not Shiva who had caught him, but Gentiana herself. The woman behind the vessel. That short pause she had given, registering his ownership. Such a small moment, but it was enough to know it was fully Gentiana speaking and not the cruel goddess.  
    What could he do but obey?  
    He smiled fondly.  
    “My love, when have I ever minded?” He arched in to her touch as much as he was able. “But how kind it is of you to ask. Do what you will with your fallen King.” Then he surrendered his straining body. Gentiana felt dangerous, distractedly so, and it made him near-on proud.  
   Let her have her mastery.


	2. Chapter 2

Her touch grew ever colder on his skin, and he felt a calling pulse through his bones, into the infinite darkness that was so barely hidden there, and he felt it react in a realm that was inside him and just so barely contained, stretching strands of black towards a part they had missed for so long.  
    Saltlakrits around Gentiana's slender fingers, engulfing her hand, and when she pushed right through him, where his entrails once were, or still were, he never bothered to check, and then she pulled, and Ardyn was right back at one of the bad days he sometimes had when he was young, when he was oh-so-mortal, when raging waves of molasses threatened to drown him.

    “See there, see there, here he is again...” A dull pain, a barely audible whisper in his left temple, something not heard for many ages. Gentiana, bound in golden chains, the daemon spilling out taunts in hissing voices, blood and tears in clothing where she had clawed at herself in her desperate attempts to make it stop.  
    Then there was silence, and all things ground to a halt. Was this how the world felt for those poor bastards when he told them with all insistence to pause for just a moment when he had more important things to do?  
    Large snowflakes hung frozen in midair in an impossibly blue sky, that dark and splendid turquoise the world turned into some days right before the sun set. Her hands on his cheeks, warm and dry like they used to be, and she turned his head slightly down, enough to really kiss his lips, to explore the soft wetness between teeth and cheeks with a nimble tongue.  
    Only when she had enough of that, enough of tiny bites with sharp teeth, enough of his taste, did she let him catch his breath.  
  
    He gasped as she let up her advances. Small tingling pinpoints of pain resonated from where she had feasted on his mouth, nipped slightly too hard. Again, his bones resonated with energy and the pit inside of him was so vulnerably, painfully bared. Her hand still hovered amid the thick dripping liquid of the scourge, all sickly sweet. It had been so close to swallowing her once more and yet she had the strength, the power now, to push it back. Power, even, as she had just demonstrated so expertly, to take his own darkness and stitch a new loop in time just for him.  
    He did not enjoy the taste of his own medicine. And yet, he could appreciate the beauty of this space that she had sculpted just for him. A world spinning in ice and twilight ocean blues.  
    He wanted her to touch him again.

  
    And there, again, the daemon chittered away, somewhere in the no-man’s-land between his head and hers, and he had no idea if it was even real. His head was swimming, and for a moment he forgot the proper order of those events so long past.  
    “Had I not exorcised you from her long ago?” His voice: barely a whisper.  
    But the daemon sank back into the darkness. Nothing more than a memory. Oh, how cruel.  
    He angled his head up as much as was able, leaving his neck bared, accepting his position. He towered so much taller than her, and yet, he was beneath her.  
    “Allow me my turn, love. Or are you not done with me yet?”

    As he looked, more of a world crystallized around them. He remembered it. Temple. Sanctuary. Not in roughly hewn sandstone this time, but cast in ice and diamonds, tiny rainbows dancing in them. It was the ghost of a place he knew all too well, a place where prayers and hymns to his abilities still hung in the air like the snowflakes did. Behind the clear walls was a landscape he did not recognize, sharp angles and impossibly steep mountains, stretching out into the blue. He could see structure behind structure behind structure, sparkling in an nonexistent light.  
    “This is where I stay, my beloved, when I am not needed.”  
    A little tug on the first of many layers, and it came off so easily. She folded the shawl neatly, laying it down in midair, where only now the contour of hands slowly materialized, then arms, a body: a sculpture of herself made from ice, the clear eyes opened, staring at him intently.

    “This place…” His voice faltered, and he struggled to attain a tight rein on it once more. “My, what memories we have here.”  
    He could all but hear those hymns on the breeze once more, could almost feel his own boots echo down those hallowed halls despite still being trapped, unmoving, under Gentiana’s spell. Somewhere, through those doors and down embellished corridors, lay her bedroom, her pen, her holding cell. And he thought how beautiful this place is, trapped in time. Nothing to ruin it. _No, not even I can ruin it this time.  
_     He understood. She was showing him her true self. Deepest pits of her soul. A little piece of their past, immortalized. She still thought about him – and it hardly mattered to him whether she thought ill of him or no – for why else would she make this her sanctuary?  
    He cast his eyes back to her, took in her Astral-gifted form. She had once burned in the fire, and now she was encased in ice, oh, how fitting. He sighed.  
    “After all this time.”  
    She practically hovered in the glacial landscape, watching him watching her, something like anticipation on her face, both calm and fierce at the same time, and he had to wonder. What was she going to show him next? Would it be his own failed execution which had taken place at the centre of the sanctuary? Would it be the times when they made love, soft and quiet as snowfall and each filled with nothing but fervent empathy for the other? Or would it be the harsh hours he spent trying to drive the daemon out of her? If he stilled his mind, he could even hear the screams.  
    He hated being made to wait. Under this spell, the shadows inside him were sluggish and drowsy, but still they reacted with as much distaste as they could muster. Held still. Out of control. They chittered away their denial of the situation. He ignored them, and continued with the only weapon he had left. He so badly wanted to know.  
    “For one who looks so serene, you certainly don’t seem to have been able to shed this rather ruinous part of your past. Why is that?”  
  
    The sound of tiny silver bells, or was it laughter? Her face was unmoving, but the lips of the statue had parted, showing pointy little teeth. Her own hands freed him from the armour of fabric his coat was, peeling of leather and appliqués, folding it carefully, handing it over to a new icy version of herself that appeared on his other side. His vest followed suit.  
    “And why should I try to shed a part of me?” Nimble fingers opening his red shawl, wrapping it around her own neck, then undoing the buttons hidden in the folds of his shirt one by one. “It pains me no more, and I have long learned to cherish the times when love and anguish left deep chasms in my heart.” She opened the white fabric, freeing his body, and waited a few slow beats of his black heart, before she laid one fingertip between his collarbones, dragging down over his chest with a sharp nail, just enough to not split his skin.  
    “You think this is a lesson for you, don't you, beloved?” Her hand held the tip of his chin now, moving his head with the ease one would move the head of a doll, the ease he had moved Prompto's pretty little head when the others were not looking, appreciating the mixture between hate and arousal.  
  
    Every shred of fabric she removed felt like another layer of his psyche being dismantled, laid painfully bare. If it had been done at the hands of any other person, he would have felt humiliation, but here there was only the fact, no apology.  
_Look at the ruin I have become._  
She carried on, stripping him while she talked of lacking all desire to shed her own layers. Again, from any other this would have been a taunt.

  
    He exhaled, breaths haggard in the crisp, icy air. He could sense the cold, but not in any way that made it uncomfortable to him, and he had to wonder: what sort of blessing from the Astrals was this? His eyes widened as she called up icy replications of herself to aid her in her task. Widened all the more when he felt her sharp drag of fingernail on skin. Anticipation, and pleasure, yes, but it was only when she manipulated his chin, moving his face any which way she pleased, that he felt a burning sensation spread out from deep inside.

  
    There, echoing the move he had pulled on the young Magitek boy. Had she been watching then, too? In all likelihood, yes. In that way, she was no better than him; biding time in the shadows, watching and waiting until the time was right. He felt a small sliver of pride at having played such a part in sculpting her into the fine creature she had become.  
    The anticipation burned too deep, and he wanted her to strike out into his darkness once more.  
    “And why should it not be? Have I not sinned? Or is this merely a matter of your good graces?”  
    He had, by now, accepted his position. And he was aroused, but in a way he had not experienced for such a long time. Here, he lacked the usual façade he held up around others. No grins. No mastery.  
    “Come now, I don’t deserve your kindness.”

  
    “You deserve the kindness every mortal deserves.” A tiny kiss on his cheek. “But you have not learned in all those years, so who am I to try to teach you now?”  
    Slender fingers undoing the fabrics covering his modesty, leaving them to pool around his numb legs. Her hands moving over his skin, blind woman exploring, rediscovering tender spots, dancing over veins raised under velvet.  
    “You have a soft spot for him”, she stated after a small eternity, nails caressing his temples, the thin skin under his eyes. Nails way too sharp. “Unchanging, as you are, it had to be a boy like him. Difficult innocence and little whimpers, a creature of your own making. It was wise to teach Lunafreya the way I did, making her undesirable as a toy. She suffered enough. But then...” The first one of the sculptures started moving, handing the shawl she was holding to her sisters. Where the MTs moved in jerking, robotic motions whenever they were up to a task that was not deeply implanted into their broken minds, the crystal girl's movements were fluid like water finding a way through obstacles, bones and joints only a vague idea.

  
    As she approached him, she changed with every little step. Long hair melting into the kimono, leaving a cropped feathery mess, features changing from angled and elegant to a snub nose and lips slightly too wide and full for the boyish face. Tiny snowflakes formed where freckles would be. Only the smile Ardyn knew so well remained.  
    “... I always liked watching.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

_I always liked watching._

 

How she always did. Ardyn felt a short pang of resentment that Noctis and his party was now the focus of her silent gaze, when once it had been only him. But that fact, on its own, had led to the near-perfect recreation of the young Magitek boy that now stood before him.

Prompto Argentum.

His breath caught in his icy throat. Nothing escaped her notice, now, did it?

The Queen, offering up his own pawn back to him. He wanted to reach out, touch that perfect youthful face. Mess with the toy he’d created. But no, this was her apparition. Not his property. A soft tease, and yet at the same time why did it feel so dangerous? The eyes that now watched him from that icy visage were steely, and while the expression was calm and almost vacant, Ardyn got the strangest sense that something was about to come full circle. Tinkling of soft ice crystals colliding in the air, miniature cosmic encounters, microscopic worlds forming and coming unmade in the no-space of Shiva’s domain.

The flare that had risen up when he’d first sensed the danger lurking behind that gaze fizzled down as quickly as it had come, until the daemons inside him were sunk, lying slick at the base of his stomach like a heavy tarry film. Calmness. Acceptance.

Gentiana, before him, watching him curiously, hands still caressing his temple. He didn’t smile, although he was grateful.

‘Ah, you know I love to play,’ he said at last. ‘You know me far too well: of course it had to be him. I suppose you’d like to watch the show?’ And he made one last-ditch attempt to move, muscles straining in his neck, achieving nothing. He hadn’t expected it would work. And now he stood, frozen and in the state of undress that he was, a sublime replica of the object of his machinations edging ever closer.

 

 

The young man moved, one hand joining hers, smooth fingers on his temples, on his lips, opening up his mouth, entering the ever spilling cavern. Ardyn felt the cool surface of the creature glide around him, positioning himself behind his back, already hard and just waiting for a command,

‘Do you wish me to call upon the others, my beloved? All those that you made your servants for a night and a day, looking for relief, filling them with a part of yourself no one can cope with?’

Smiling, licking, letting fingers melt in his mouth, filling his thirsty gorge with ice cold waters, soothing the blackness whirling inside. When the boy entered him, it once again was quicksilver. No pain, only the feeling of that stubborn ring of muscle accommodating something pleasantly cool that slowly grew in diameter.

The hands slid down to that pulsating thing between his thighs, just holding it loosely, their fingers intertwined.

‘I remember all of them,’ those perfect crimson lips whispered, unbearably close to his own. ‘Do you?’

 

 

He knew what was going to happen from the moment the young man extended his fingers. And, had he wanted to rebel, he could have bitten down on those smooth, crystalline fingers as they swashed around in his mouth, gathering saliva. It would not have made a difference, in the end, and so he sucked down softly instead, tasted the coolness, let his mouth be filled, salt pricking his eyes as intense cold from the frozen touch shot up through his teeth. Tears that gathered in the corners turned to ice before they had a chance to drip down his cheeks.

A flash of that snowflake-feathered hair and the boy moved behind him, pressed up against his back, then took control, entered him, ground up against him like a glacier crushing rock underfoot. The shocking cold of his cock moving inside him was such a contrast to the icy grind upon his back, and yet, strange, how none of it hurt. He felt his eyes flutter shut in something close to bliss as the gliding mercury through his veins calmed the roiling daemons within. Oh, and now, expanding inside him, filling him up. Rarely did he get the opportunity for arousal without the angry gnash and fury of the daemons inside him. This felt, confusingly, more like _himself_ than he thought possible.

Then Gentiana reached down, coolness sheathing his cock, drawing it up into firmness and making the butterflies in his stomach dance.

She asked him if he remembered all those he had used. And oh, he remembered. Not all, not distinctly, but he remembered the pain, leaching into his own body like liquid under osmosis, falling under his unstoppable force, just taking, taking, taking until they were emptied shells.

He twitched, and the movement did not go unnoticed by Gentiana or any of her clones. He shuddered in breath. There was no way to make the climbing arousal decrease.

‘My love… I remember… and it-’ He paused to gasp, quite against his control. ‘It has never been enough to make me stop.’

The grinding against his back increased, glacier carving out valleys as it ploughed its way onward through the terrain of his soul. Just how much more could he take?

 

 

‘I know, beloved, I know.’ Her hands were moving faster now, keeping up with the steady rhythm of her freckled creation pumping into those vulnerable hidden places that remained in the fallen king, silencing the thing he had become, leaving Ardyn Lucis Caelum, shivering under the touch of the first man she brought to join them, coming hard and early when his heat filled him, coming again in her sweet mouth as their lover continued, turning into a malleable mass under their bodies, sobbing and laughing at the same time, begging them not to stop, to never stop.

‘We collected them’, she stated, two voices speaking in unison. ‘The old ones, the young ones, even the rare ones that were willing to the end, and we collected a part of their pain as a memento. We did not come to give you a lesson, but to give you a promise.’

Ice on his cheeks, and as he looked, her Queen was floating above her, regarding him with mild amusement. Her gaze obliterated him, poured out his ego like a glass of liqueur for dead friends. Was this peace?

 

 

Such a gift she was giving him, unasked-for, unfettered by rage, such a sweet poison making him come undone. His euphoria was mixed in with the cold and the ice and the raw memory of every soul he’d taken in his two thousand years of turmoil.

Shiva, hovering high above, was a stark reminder that his Gentiana, his fallen flower, was no longer just herself alone. Their voices joined as one painted such a juxtaposition to him: one he had possessed, and one who once had possessed him, combined now under a single mantle of intent. His body was thrumming too intensely with pleasure to feel discomfort at this thought, and, to an extent, his hatred for Shiva as one of those who denied his ascension only increased his arousal. Shiva, with her own plans in motion.

Well. She always had been a meddler.

He looked up at the Goddess now with his tear-streaked eyes, but her gaze was so piercing and brilliant-white he had to drop away, focus on Gentiana’s black-fringed beauty instead. The freckle-faced ice clone at his back still moved sensuously, touching his body any which way it could land a finger, having received no indication to stop from its mistress.

Above him, the Goddess and her Messenger, sending hints of promises. And here, he, with all his secrets laid bare, with all his memories being drunk up by a playful Goddess and this creature of beauty who had both been a servant of darkness and light in her unlucky, troubled life, Ardyn surrendered once more to another wave of passion. Breath shuddered out in ragged gasps, taking the edge off his words.

‘A… a promise? What would that be… pray tell.’

 

 

‘We will wait for you.’

Time slowed to a halt, stretching the moment of not-quite-relief to an eternity.

‘ _When your plan is finished, we will wait.’_

‘I will wait for you, my beloved. As I always have.’

‘ _I will wait for you, Ardyn Izunia. For we have things to talk about_ _.’_

Their voices intermingled, and for the first time since ages, something touched that little golden heart, yellow and hard, and there was a feeling inside he could not quite place, for it had been a long time.

 

 

He melted into that feeling, reaching towards it like a flower to the sun. Layers unfurling – oh, but hadn’t so many been sloughed off already? He had lost track. But now, the knowledge that both of those beings that become Her, will not stand in his way as he drives toward his brutal, shadowed end. Gentiana knew it had to happen this way, didn’t she?

The icy figure at his back loosened its hold and Ardyn felt his body fall slack against his frozen bonds. Chittering of daemons now utterly quelled under a thick, glitter-encrusted layer that soothed like aloe and held firm and crystalline like crème brulée. His blackened heart smelted temporarily of the salt and mire until all that remained was liquid gold, pouring out, pouring and refining and trickling in runnels across the open landscape. He could not tell if this was the pure pleasure of comfort from the woman he loved, or a small taste of the eternal rest he was driving Noctis to bring him. But it was no absolute, it was and would always be a mixture of the two, it could not be separated so easily. And still, the edge of relief was drawn out, incomplete. Her acknowledgement that he still had further to go before his heart could melt out in such a way that it couldn’t be hardened again.

‘Then I shall have something to look forward to, when the end of all things draws near.’

 

 

‘Close your eyes’, they prayed, and how could he not follow such an easy plea?

Lips on his own, and he was falling.

Falling down into an endless abyss, or maybe he was flying, floating through a diamond-studded sky, and then there was weight on him, another abyss, one he had been craving for an eternity, and he fell all too willingly.

Gentiana, atop of him, the lightest flush painted on her pale cheeks, smiled. No need to look at him. She knew him all too well.

Shiva before her, around her, and they kissed and whispered and giggled, and the noise came out as tiny shimmering bubbles, and they knew they followed the rules for a curse fair enough, telling him there was something in store for him. It was not the fault of a Goddess when the foolish mortal was too diverted to listen.

 

 

A tiny sigh reached Ardyn Lucis Caelum, and he felt a world shake. Dissolve. Form anew.

 

 

_Let him. Just once, before you speak to him. Please._

_And yet, did you not decide another thing?_

_Let him come undone. For my sake._

 

 

Voices that were not meant for him, and yet they were, and he knew the Goddess wanted him to hear, and he saw her, and she was sky and ground and he was but a man. Alone with himself, for the first time in ages.

 

 

He closed his eyes, and lost track of his place in the universe, sliding inside the abyss with a soft shiver of something he would have called warmth, but not in the normal sense, for it was still so icy cold all around him. He could imagine he wasn’t falling apart from the weight of the long years.

And yes, Shiva was letting him hear those words, and he ought to have been worried, truly, but there was no space for such things as he drifted deeper into his blessing and his curse.

With a soft exhale, he fell into communion with his Goddess. Always, only Gentiana.

From one angle, he was a lone wanderer and she the landscape he travelled in, surrounding him entirely. And from another, it was quite as expected: she was a woman and his hands traced over the curve of her hips as he rocked inside her. And from yet another, she was a weapon carving pleasure into his veins at every point of contact. He was not sure at this stage whether it was bliss or torture, but he did not give himself enough amnesty to ask her to end it. Instead, he smiled.

 

 

Gentiana, atop of him, dancing herself into heavens in the embrace of her Goddess, taking the Fallen, the Falling King along. Breaths sweet and deep like wind carrying blossoms, and Shiva smiled into her vessel's lips, brushing away those petals of leather and silk she wore, caressing her skin with the winter's touch.

The eternal hands tightened the moonsilvery chains that she wrapped around the mortal woman when she came to her, so many years ago, when she was offering her life in exchange for peace, and as Gentiana felt the delicious tightness cut into her hide, reminding her whom she belonged to, the skies opened up for her, and her nectar was like rain.

A little longer...

A little higher...

The body atop him reared up, rose like wave and came down like one, her fingers digging into his skin, leaving little marks. Black silk on his face, her fragrance filling the abyss as she rested, catching her breath.

Sitting up.

The boy made from crystal and ice offered her his hand, and she got down from Ardyn like a queen from her throne, graciously, smiling, a little blushed, and left him upright and throbbing.

‘You will be late, beloved, if you don't hurry.’ She cocked her head, and she was right, and Shiva's silent laughter was like snowflakes on his naked skin, melting to cold little tears.

 

 

How glorious she looked, reaching her euphoria atop him with a heavenly sigh. A moment, just a moment, in which he saw her fully undressed to the last layer of her soul. A small moment in which they were equal.

But Shiva still held her reins, and when it came to it, she clambered off him, left him with tension, with his own incompleteness.

The climbing euphoria inside his own body was unbearable, fit to bursting, so when she chided him softly that he would be late, he could not help but appeal.

‘My Goddess… Please… Finish what you started.’

He had promised himself he wouldn’t beg. But that was before such sweet release was dangled before his eyes and snatched away.

Shiva, Gentiana, the ice maidens in unison, turned away. Left him there amid the ice and the memory of a long-lost temple to shiver in his frustrations. Her parting words had been said; what need had she to remain?

He tried to reach out as she danced away in the chill air, but she was not far enough or finished enough for the spell to be over. She turned to him at the end of her short walk, and touched a soft finger to her lips, so pale against the peach flush of her skin, then the world was distorting, twisting out of this hidden reality in a way he knew so well, a way so similar to his own daemonic stitching.

Ice soon firmed up, clouding the temple from view, wrapping it over like paper over a gift. He was inside a collage made of memory shreds, which merged into fabric that became the mountains of Niflheim, that became the freight train’s walls. The folds and strata of his clothing layers returned to him, and when the transition was done it was as though they had always been there, as though they had never been removed.

The cabin glistened with the after-glaze of ice and magic, and he was alone, but this time Gentiana was no longer the sky above him nor the earth beneath his feet. This loneliness, heightened by the unresolved ache in his loins, by the urgency in what he had to now do next, was unwelcome and bitter, yet all the same he could not help a small smile at her audacity, the spark that remained through her frozen charm.

She was a cruel mistress.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now there's only left to decide which song to quote to end this and promise the next part.  
> There will be a next part.  
> Maybe just a line from a little old thing...
> 
>  
> 
> _Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?_
> 
> Epilogue:  
>  _Has he always been like this?_  
>  _He was always a bit of an eccentric, yes. And not used to being used._  
>  _One should think he knows how it is to get fucked by the Gods by now._  
>  The girls giggled.


End file.
